Museo Scienze Naturali Genova - Coendou spinosus

The Paraguaian hairy dwarf porcupine (''Coendou spinosus'') is a

porcupine Porcupines are large rodents with coats of sharp spines, or quills, that protect them against predation. The term covers two families of animals: the Old World porcupines of family Hystricidae, and the New World porcupines of family, Erethizont ...

species from the family Erethizontidae. It is found in

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...

and

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

. They have a short tail and gray brown quills and feed on

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22 ...

pupae A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their ...

vegetable Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems, ...

s and

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...

s. This species was formerly sometimes assigned to ''Sphiggurus'', a genus no longer recognized since genetic studies showed it to be

polyphyletic A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of converg ...

. The population formerly recognized as the orange-spined hairy dwarf porcupine (''Sphiggurus villosus'') has been reclassified to this species. Its closest relatives are the

bicolored-spined porcupine The bicolored-spined porcupine (''Coendou bicolor'') is a species of nocturnal and arboreal rodent in the family Erethizontidae. It is found in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The head and body of ''Coendou bicolor'' measure about 543& ...

(''Coendou bicolor'') and the

black dwarf porcupine The black dwarf porcupine, also known as Koopman's porcupine (''Coendou nycthemera''), is a porcupine species from the New World porcupine family endemic to northern Brazil. It occurs in the Amazon rainforest east of the Madeira River and south o ...

(''Coendou nycthemera'').

References

*John F. Eisenberg and Kent H. Redford, 2000. Mammals of Neotropics: Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil. Coendou Mammals described in 1822 Taxa named by Georges Cuvier {{rodent-stub